Myself and a couple of mates took the Newcastle-Amsterdam ferry in August to make it to the Dolomites to try out some Alpine roads. I've done a lot of climbing in the area before but always in an Vauxhall hire car! We started with a pretty massive ride from the ferry to Munich in a one go! Especially as the first 30 miles took 2 hours due to a closed motorway. I seemed to cope with the distance better than my BMW riding chums which surprised me as the longest ride I had had this summer was about 40 miles!. Anyway, 10 hours later we got our hands on one or two of these!
The next day, after a slightly slow start we set of for the Grossglockner Pass in Austria. You have to pay to use the road but it was well worth it. We also managed to get a glimpse of the new Range Rover being tested. The roads are made of silk and the nice wide hairpins were great after a day and a half on motorways.
There is one little road that climbs up to an area called the Bikers Nest, can't say I enjoyed getting there are there are loads of cobbled, off camber turns and it started to rain as well!
After this we travelled into Italy and the Dolomites where we spent 3 days doing some circular routes based out of Corvara in Badia. This is lovely little village and the campsite, although pricey was great. The map below shows a route we did round the Sella Ronda that took in 117 hairpins in 3 hours. Even I felt pretty confident cornering by the end of that lot! All the time you are riding in amazing scenery on brilliant roads.
After experiencing such perfection, it was a bit of a drag riding for a day and a half back to Amsterdam through some torrential rain.
Luckily when I got back home I had my pit crew of my wee girl and neighbours kids to clean up the bike and park her until our next trip....where will that be.....suggestions gratefully received!
but you're getting in the way of the scenery in some of the piccies... which... as a suggestion for the future... we could well do without 
Some fooker told me we had 
